Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest

Talking with artist William O'Brien

Excellent album covers catch the eye, dribble it around a little, and then snap it back into place, forever skewed. They can be funny, gross, shocking, stunning, or just plain wrong. They can define artists.

With the Pitchfork News feature Take Cover, we aim to track down the best new album covers taking up web space and vinyl bins across the world and get the story behind them. In this installment, we check in with artist William O'Brien, who drew the complex interlocking forms on the cover of Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest. Read the interview below.Pitchfork: How did you first link up with Grizzly Bear?

William O'Brien: I originally knew Ed [Droste] a number of years ago because I was living in New York, in Brooklyn. At the time, Ed was just finishing NYU. I knew that he was a musician in high school, but he had just started to go back to making music.Â I've known him since he first started Grizzly Bear, and I heard very early versions of his album acoustic. I met the rest of the band when I was in Chicago going to school.

Pitchfork: Did you do the album cover specifically for them, or did they take a preexisting work of yours?

WO: Ed had seen my drawings for a while. It was kind of interesting because my work has actually changed and evolved over time as their music actually, coincidentally, has. I knew they were recording a new album, but I didn't really know at the time what the album was going to be like. Coincidentally, I was doing a lot of abstract drawings. But as it turns out, the time that they were making that album and also the time that I was making this work, there was a parallel between the two that happened simultaneously.

Ed approached me and said that he was interested in using some of the drawings for the album, and I said, "Of course, you're welcome to use them." So I sent over a lot of examples to them, and he actually chose the drawing for the cover of the album. It was one of the first drawings that I had made in a series, and in a weird way, similar to the album, it had a complexity to it in terms of things that I had made. I wasn't sure how I felt about it because it sort of has an awkward placement to it. But after hearing the album, and the whole coincidence of when they actually recorded the album, it was like this amazing, beautiful thing that happened. The drawing really was a perfect complement to the things that they were working on at the same time.

Pitchfork: When you say the drawing had an awkward placement to it, how do you mean?

WO: Well, that drawing was one of the drawings that I didn't know how confident I felt about, so it was sort of funny that he chose that drawing. I wasn't really sure how good or bad it was as a work of art. I think that's the sense that I was in; it sort of opened up the possibility for it to be collaborative with the music. More than it just being used as clip art or art that would accompany a presentation for the music, I felt like the drawing had an in-between state that paralleled things that were going on in the album.

Pitchfork: It's true that the drawing has a homespun but meticulous quality to it that does kind of mirror the album.

WO: Well, also I think that the title of the album brought about a lot of-- I think it's a really hard title because you don't know what it means, so therefore it leads to this discovery of geography and where that place actually is. I think that a lot of the drawings I do have to do with subconscious memory, and also a kind of geography in the sense that it has a sense of geological or psychological mapping to it. I'm trying not to talk about my art too pretentiously.

Pitchfork: The album has been quite successful. Has it been interesting for you to see something with your work associated with it do as well as it has?

WO: There is that weird phenomenon between the authenticity of a work of art and popular culture, but I think that the sense of earnestness, in terms of the band really appreciating my work, was an interesting time marker.Â For me, in terms of my own art practice, I've had some commercial success, but I'm always interested to see how my art will translate into other media and culture in general. I think that the designer who worked on the album as well, Ben [Wilkerson] Tousley, did a really good job of respecting the typography with the background. The printing is really good, and the color is very accurate. In terms of the level of success and how many times it's been reproduced, it's a really great thing that is actually very comforting. It's like I see an old friend everywhere. It's been good.

Pitchfork: Do you have any favorite album covers?

WO: I like all music. Earlier, I worked as a graphic designer, and I always liked going to the record store and seeing album art. I'm really attracted to a lot of 90s album cover art, and I'm really fascinated by the relationship of the art world and the music world. Sonic Youth's albums are some of my favorites, but I think that's because I like the artist as well as the music. I also love My Bloody Valentine's Loveless for the color saturation. I really appreciate looking at old records. I think that there's something amazing that happens when there have been a lot of hands touching the actual album. A lot of classic rock albums that have aged-- even like Neil Young's albums from thrift stores-- I really like. There's a sense of how the music is timeless ,but also its connection to humanity, so you can feel that someone has touched it and loved it.

Pitchfork: Are you looking forward to seeing this album in a used record store, all beat up, in 20 years or so?

WO: Kind of, yeah! I mean, I really like the idea. Actually, with a lot of my drawings, I am really fascinated by how things sit in time-- especially with this album. Critically, it seems like this album, for Grizzly Bear, is this statement; it's been critically held as their creative peak or something. I think it'll be really interesting to see my own relationship to the album in five or 10 years and if that changes or how that stays. Even the Sonic Youth albums, with [Gerhard] Richter [cover artist for Daydream Nation] and with Mike Kelley [cover artist for Dirty], still retain that timelessness because there is a sense that art and music have a currency that is timeless. When it meets, the album creates this sense of memory so it doesn't matter when you see it.